Reading through Simply Good News, I discovered one other important idea that I want to mention. The idea did not strike me as significant on first swipe. It wasn’t until several pages beyond that it hit me how impactful this idea was, so I turned back the pages, re-read, and then pondered for some time. It has toRead More

Simply Good News is simply a good read as it brings into focus aspects of the gospel that have been out of focus in many traditional evangelical circles. The subject has not changed, but rather the depth of field has. In some ways there is nothing new here. What isRead More

I’m reading N.T. Wright’s latest popular installment entitled Surprised by Scripture and chapter 4, “The Biblical Case for Ordaining Women” caught my attention. Having read his stance on this issue in other writings, I expected not to be “surprised.” Though I wasn’t “shocked, amazed, stupefied, or bewildered” (all synonyms ofRead More

Terry Tiessen is one of my favorite writers because he’s so clear and accessible. At every turn he is careful to write for all of his readers and not just for himself or his peers (a casualty for not a few academicians). He has an excellent summary of Wright’s position,Read More

“There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.” Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian, p. 17 ScotRead More

UPDATE: For a fuller treatment of this book’s details, see here. One of the best classes I took while at Denver Seminary was a philosophy of science course under Dr. Alan Myatt, in which he assigned Thomas Kuhn’s now classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn’s book opened my eyesRead More

Tom (N. T.) Wright says The point, again, is that by the Spirit those who are already justified by faith have their lives transformed, and the final verdict will be in accordance with that transformation, imperfect though it remains. See comments by N. T. Wright #19 and #23 at DennyRead More

One of the “sticky wickets” between the “Piperazi and the Wrightonians” (quoting Mike Bird here) is the issue of imputation (crediting) of Christ’s righteousness to our account. Mike Bird‘s paper “What Is There Between Minneapolis and Durham?: A Third Way in the Piper-Wright Debate” offers some good insights. In myRead More

With N. T. Wright doing battle over “Justification by Faith” at the upcoming ETS annual meeting (Nov, 16-19), I thought this quote is tellingly apropos. Everything I’m going to say about the moral life, about moral effort, about conscious shaping of our patterns of behavior, takes place simply and solelyRead More

Justin Taylor has an excellent post from Tom Schreiner’s upcoming release 40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law. What Does Paul Mean by “the Righteousness of God”? This is an excellent prelude for and snapshot to what I expect will be a lively exchange at the Evangelical Theological Society’s 62ndRead More

N. T. Wright’s newest is scheduled to be release in March, 2010. After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters sounds very promising and hits all believers square in the practical world. Wright says: “The point about ‘vice’, the opposite of ‘virtue’, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all thatRead More